CURRENT TRENDS

Not »Without a Color«, but Black & White

An essay on the new trend of Black & White films.

The author defines contemporary black and white films as a separate artistic genre. He also draws a distinction between the films that were made by abstaining from color and real black and white movies. Inspired by the visualization of the Croatian independent film Mondo Bobo, he analyses the visual values of its black and white film photography, comparing it with the photography of The Third Woman. The origin of its high contrast is explained, while composition, its problems and role are discussed, as well as the stylizing possibilities of graphics on film.

Also, the creative possibilities of the use of color contrast in the contemporary cinema film are reexamined, and by analogy the importance of black and white contrast for the expressiveness of black and white film photography. Referring to Eisenstein’s essays Not colored film, but color film and Color film, the author considers the possibilities of establishing the color film as a genre. He argues for the authors’ color films of artistic (visual) ambitions that are, above all, the result of a cooperation between a director and a cameraman.

The essay is commemorative and it is dedicated to Sergej Mihailovič Eisenstein (28. February 1898 — 11. February 1948), who was a real supporter of strong rhetoric on film.

Silvestar Kolbas